As we celebrate the 250th birthday of the United States, I’ve been thinking about patriotism.

Some patriotic displays look like what can only be described as worship. Christian nationalism is on the rise. Others, reacting against these trends, would rather burn the flag than wave it. Still others just feel cynical or apathetic.

“Our country is already doomed,” said one commentor on Facebook. “So why pray or vote?”

I believe that what our country needs more than ever is people who will love it in Jesus’ name. In other words, we need Christian patriotism.

“Patriotism” which means, “love of one’s country” is not a biblical category. But the raw materials are there: We should pay our taxes, pray for government officials, follow the laws of the land, and love our neighbors as ourselves. All of these are forms of love.

Upstream of these various commands single command in Scripture is the assumption that Christians have a higher loyalty.

The New Testament makes it clear that all identities are of little importance compared with our identity in Christ. Markers like ethnicity, religion, culture, or gender, should no longer be sources of division or pride (Galatians 3:26-29).

However, our identity in Christ does not erase our other identities and commitments; it redefines them.

What we might otherwise be tempted to idolize, despise, or dismiss, Jesus empowers us to love. If Jesus has our highest allegiance, we will be able to love our country rightly.

Let me first address the concept of allegiance to Jesus, and then suggest three ways that putting Jesus first helps us to be patriotic Christians in the best sense of the term.

1. A Higher Allegiance

“Jesus is Lord.” This is the essential confession of the Christian (1 Cor 12:3).

First-century believers knew that this was not only a spiritual statement. It was a political one.

Caesar claimed titles like “Lord” and “Savior.” When a new Caesar came to power, his ascension was heralded as “gospel” for all Roman subjects. Roman coins declared that Caesar was a “son of God.”

Into this political reality, the Gospel writers and the Apostles claimed a different Lord—not the one sitting on a throne in Rome, but one born in a stable in Bethlehem and lifted up on a cross outside Jerusalem. They proclaimed a different gospel—not the gospel of the Roman Empire, but the Gospel of the forgiveness of sins. The Gospel of the already-but-not-yet Kingdom of Heaven.

As such, Christians are those who have given their allegiance to a higher king. And whose citizenship is ultimately in a different kingdom (Philippians 3:20).

This was a subversive claim. And in the first few centuries of Church history, it came at a cost.

In the 80s and 90s AD, Emperor Domitian, annoyed by the growth of the new Christian faith, enacted a loyalty test for all Roman subjects. Once a year, they were to go to their local shrine of the Imperial cult and pledge their allegiance to Caesar. It was quick and painless: just offer a pinch of incense on the altar and say three little words: “Caesar is Lord.” If they complied, they would receive a small paper allowing them to buy and sell. (This is likely the background of the “mark of the beast” in Revelation).

Many Christians refused to do this. And for their loyalty to King Jesus they were ostracized, imprisoned, or executed for treason.

They knew they had a higher allegiance.

Our nation would claim a kind of allegiance from us as well. Is it through offering incense on an altar? No. It’s a subtler temptation. It tempts us to give our allegiance to America by trusting our military power and economic prosperity. It tempts us to believe that America has a special relationship with God and to baptize our nation’s history in spiritual language. It tempts us to think that the cross and the flag are interrelated symbols.

Recently, a Scottish woman named Lara Bird was sworn in as a member of parliament (MP) in the United Kingdom. At the swearing-in ceremony, new MPs take an oath of allegiance to the British Crown. This is a procedural matter that doesn’t usually get attention. But Ms. Bird’s swearing-in made headlines for an interesting reason. As Ms. Bird held up her right hand to pledge her loyalty oath, she crossed her fingers. When reporters asked her why she had done this, she said, “I do swear allegiance to his Majesty King Charles” …. “but my first allegiance is, and always will be, the sovereign people of Scotland.”

I don’t know whether it was wise or ethical to make an oath with her fingers crossed, but it illustrates a point. When Jesus is your lord, every other allegiance is qualified. Whenever you pledge allegiance to the flag and to the United States of America, you are thinking, “Yes, but…”

Jesus tells us to “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and give to God what is God’s” (Mark 12:17). What is due to Caesar? Our taxes, our prayers, our (qualified) honor (1 Peter 2:17; Romans 13:6-7). On the other hand, what do we owe God? Our worship. Our trust. Our unqualified loving allegiance.

And if there is a conflict between God and country, we choose God. In the words of Peter, “We must obey God rather than men.” (Acts 5:29)

And as we choose to obey God, what does he require of us?

Love.

We refuse to worship our country. We refuse to hate it. We refuse not to care. Instead, we love.

Here are three ways I believe God-ordered love can guide our patriotism.

2. Celebration without Idolatry

As we celebrate the 250th birthday of America, there is indeed much to celebrate.

In 1 Timothy 2:1-3, Paul instructs Timothy to pray for those in authority “with intercession and thanksgivings.” It is right to give thanks for our country. It is right to celebrate what is good.

We celebrate the American ideals that made our country so unique in the first place: The belief that all people have worth and dignity; equality under the law; freedom of speech and freedom of religion; a government of the people, by the people and for the people. These are good and praiseworthy things. And the best of them were born of Christian convictions.

We celebrate and honor all those who have gone before us who have sacrificed to preserve this nation. We celebrate the ways God has been faithful to us.

We celebrate the way God has blessed the church in our nation, making it home to historic revivals, world mission movements, and Christian institutions.

But unless our eyes are fixed on Christ and his kingdom, celebration of country can morph into something more.

There is a version of the faith in which Americanism and Christianity are blended together into one substance. In this quasi-Christian religion, the flag is a sacred symbol, military service is sainthood, American history is sacred history, and America’s purposes in the world become holy.

Atlantic writer Tim Alberta grew up as a pastor's kid in an Evangelical church in Michigan. As he writes in his book The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism, that when missionaries came to speak about their work spreading the gospel in other nations, they would be received with a polite golf clap. But on Veterans Day or Memorial Day weekend, men and women in uniform would be given a standing ovation. Alberta began to wonder what was truly being worshiped.

The late great Tim Keller wrote in his book Counterfeit Gods, “When you take a good thing and make it an ultimate thing, that is idolatry.” Our nation is a good thing. It is a gift. But in the absence of a robust loyalty to Jesus, a nation with its symbols, its stories, its power, and the sense of transcended meaning it provides, can feel like it is ultimate. When that happens, it becomes an idol.

How do we know if our patriotism has become, or is at risk of becoming, idolatrous? Here’s a simple diagnostic question. Many churches display a US flag in the sanctuary. (This is a practice that seems to have become widespread around the time of World War 1). If you showed up one Sunday to find the flag removed, how would you react?

3. Critique without Condemnation

A second way that Christians can love our country is to challenge what is wrong without condemning. Only real love can hold this balance. As Paul teaches us, ‘Love does not rejoice in evil, but rejoices with the truth.” And “Love…always hopes, always perseveres” (1 Corinthians 13:6, 7b).

Love is always a friend of the truth.

In ancient Israel, it was the false prophets who said, “Everything is fine. God is on our side!” Only the true prophets, like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel had the courage and the love to say, “Everything is not fine.” (eg, Ezekiel 13:10, Jeremiah 7:4-8).

They did not speak to condemn their country, but to call it to change for the better.

There is a long tradition of American Christians who have done the same thing.

Lemuel Haynes, Revolutionary War veteran and the first black minister ordained in our young republic, wrote a rebuttal to the Declaration of Independence titled, “Liberty Further Extended: Our Free thoughts on the illegality of Slave-keeping: Wherein those arguments that Are used in its vindication Are plainly confuted. Together with a humble Address to such as are Concerned in the Practice.” As you can tell from the title, he challenged Jefferson’s lofty words about the equality of all men. How can we say these things and still abide with slave-keeping?

Fifty years later, abolitionists like Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth took up the same cause.

We could look at other examples: civil rights activists like Martin Luther King Jr and John Lews; Christians who have advocated for the unborn; Christians who worked to abolish child labor or challenged the for-profit prison industry; advocates for immigrants’ rights; those who have protested unjust wars; the mothers and fathers who have testified before congress about school shootings.

Yes, it is patriotic to say, “God bless America.” But it is equally patriotic to insist, “America, bless God!”

Love can hold both grace and truth. Love can offer critique without condemnation. And Love can keep loving when change is slow or nonexistent. Love always hopes, always trusts, always perseveres.

4. Neighborly Love

Finally, patriotism must be local.

Only Christlike love can keep our patriotism from becoming performative or tied to the abstractions of political parties and ideologies. When we are caught up in such narratives, we care more about cultural battles, election cycles, and faceless enemies than our neighbors next door.

At the end of the day, what actually is our country? Is it our borders, our maps, our laws? Is it our presidency, our courts, our institutions? Is it our democratic principles? Is it our cultural norms, or our shared sense of history? Maybe it is all of these things. But love requires proximity. Love requires a neighborhood. Love cares about the actual people and places we are rooted.

And so, patriotic love can be boiled down to neighborly love. As Jesus so pointedly reminds us, it is our neighbors to whom we owe care, whoever they might be (Luke 10).

Conclusion

If patriotism means a cross wrapped in an American flag, or singing God Bless America in church, count me out. If patriotism means trading the Kingdom of God for the Kingdom of America, it is misguided.

But if patriotism means seeking the good of our nation by celebrating the good, speaking truth, and loving our neighbors, all out of loyalty to Christ, then this love of country is what our country needs most.

An description of Christianity dating to the 2nd century entitled “letter to Diognetus” says the following:

Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech… They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers. … They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives. [https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0101.htm]

Christians in America live under its laws, its leaders, and its flag. But we are dual citizens. And it is our heavenly citizenship that makes us better citizens here and now.

Will the American Flag be waving in heaven? I doubt it. The only banner will be the banner of God’s love waving over his people from every nation, tribe people and language. The songs we’ll be singing are not My Country Tis of Thee but “Jesus, all for Jesus” and “Holy Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty” and “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain.”

We will sing,

“Great and marvelous are your deeds,
    Lord God Almighty.
Just and true are your ways,
    King of the nations.
Who will not fear you, Lord,
    and bring glory to your name?
For you alone are holy.
All nations will come
    and worship before you,
for your righteous acts have been revealed” (Revelation 15:3-4).

Until then, let’s love this country, our earthly home, in Jesus’ name. Give thanks. Pray for her blessing. Call her to bless the Lord. And let’s do so as citizens of heaven.